Though intended to be playful, the slight did not escape the notice of the stars themselves or their legions of teen fans on Twitter who are now bashing the article for its "ignorance," E! Online for publishing it, and calling for Rankin's dismissal, according to Digiday.

In her story, Rankin wrote that even though she's relatively young herself, she simply didn't know who many of these teens were. "Eva Gutowski? Lele Pans [Pons]? Joey Graceffa? Felix Kjellberg? Are those even real people?" Rankin wrote, spelling Vine personality Lele Pons' name wrong.

But those Vine and YouTube celebrities have over 56 million followers between them. Felix Kjellberg, who goes by the handle PewDiePie on YouTube, has nearly 39 million subscribers alone.

YouTuber Tyler Oakley was one of the first internet celebrities to tweet about the story after it was published, according to Digiday. "If this 'article' is representative of [E! Online], I fear for the brand's future," he tweeted to his 4.5 million followers.

He was followed by other prominent internet stars like YouTubers Ricky Dillon, Shane Dawson, and Eva Gutowski, among others.

Rankin attempted to do damage control by tweeting that her article was meant to be sarcastic. In a statement to BuzzFeed, E! Online doubled down on its editor's statement, insisting that the article was intended to be "an irreverent, humorous take on the event."

But it did little to quell the growing tweet storm. Suddenly, the stars' millions of combined followers were out in full force.

Apart from feeling insulted on behalf of their idols, readers were also furious about what Rankin wrote about the wardrobe choices on display throughout the event: "There basically wasn't one single outfit onstage that didn't make us clutch our pearls," she wrote, adding that there was "so much skin."

And while The Washington Post writer Caitlyn Dewey concludes that "the teens are winning" this war, the real winner of the drama is E! Online, which keeps racking up the page views. Look no further than this tweet by E!'s social media manager Jeffrey Wisenbaugh, spotted by Digiday: